And now look.
At the end of a song about an abusive relationship, the singer Liza Minnelli whispers ‘no more bombs’ in a soft desperate voice. I whisper that same way now as I watch the war escalate in the Middle East, from my King size memory foam bed made using the finest petroleum. The battle for land and resources is as old as humanity and the ape. The British took Aboriginal Australia by force but wrote about it in polite terms as if it was gradually acquired. Turns out it was just a lot of murder like any land grab. Does 70,000 years of land occupation, like the Australian Aboriginals, give you ownership rights? The answer is yes, but not if someone with a greater arsenal decide they want it.
Around the middle of the 20th century, the Jews went back to their Holy land after thousands of years of expulsion, exodos and genocides and established a home state called Israel. Some believed that they had an authority over the land with a historical and biblical mandate. Many believed without a place to call home, Jews would continue to be “othered”, expelled and slaughtered, whenever times got tough.
As expressed in Der Judenstaat, a book written by Theodor Herz in 1896, the best way to avoid antisemitism in Europe was to create an independent Jewish state. Herzl proposed two possible regions for settlement – Argentina and Palestine – but recognised in the book that colonisation in either would be difficult: “In both countries important experiments in colonisation have been made, though on the mistaken principle of a gradual infiltration of Jews. An infiltration is bound to end badly. It continues till the inevitable moment when the native population feels itself threatened, and forces the government to stop a further influx of Jews. Immigration is consequently futile unless we have the sovereign right to continue such immigration.”
For that reason, Herzl, both in Der Judenstaat and in his political activity concentrated his efforts on securing official legal sanction from, as he put it, “the present masters of the land, putting itself under the protectorate of the European Powers, if they prove friendly to the plan.” Attempts to negotiate with the Ottoman authorities failed, but with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I and the subsequent creation of Mandatory Palestine under the control of Britain, the Herzl’s idea gained traction: Britain issued the Balfour Declaration that supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
And now look.
In the last few years, Hamas the leaders of Palestine attacked Israel. Israel retaliated by completely destroying Gaza and most of it’s inhabitants. Iran jumped in and attacked Israel and Israel struck back. It’s a hot August in 2025. Things are going backwards fast. The only way Israel will survive in it’s current form is to attack and annihilate. Or is there another way?
The colonisation of Palestine then, even with the protectorate of the ‘present masters of the land’ is very much in it’s infancy and witnessed by a world that understands colonisation as primitive and barbaric. The fall of Trump, which is inevitable will be a precarious moment for Israel.